'play to device'
 

i have among my many toys an asus eee pad and one of the features i really enjoy is when you play a track,video or view picture you have the option to 'play to' a network device such as my viera TV.
firstly,i have no idea what technology it is using to be able to do this? and secondly and more importantly,can my n900 do it??
the asus works extremely well doing this but one feature it doesnt allow is to search for another track whilst playing one,it simply ends the song,would be awesome if the 900 could do both...
heres hoping you guys know of something that enables this on my beloved n900 :)

Re: 'play to device'
 

try mediabox, i think it has this feature.

Re: 'play to device'
 

hmm i installed it and it does have an option for 'media renderers' but only comes up with'local' and has no effect on the tv :(

Re: 'play to device'
 

Hi stew-b. I've never heard of this "play to" feature but I'm guessing it's based on DLNA. With DLNA you can select your N900 media files from the DLNA certified TV so it's more "play from" than "play to" but it still achieves the same thing. You can set your N900 as a DLNA server here
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=71597

Re: 'play to device'
 

i dont think this is possible :( yes,you can make the 900 appear as a dlna server but i still have to use the eee pad to play it to the tv.
this is the eee pad play to option im talking about,guess its an android thing :(

Re: 'play to device'
 

zhaan is media controller for N900. I use it from time to time, but looking at Android/iOS world it could be better....

Re: 'play to device'
 

Only spent ten minutes on it, but never got Zhaan to work with my Bravia. Ended up digging out an old ZTE Blade and using a UPNP client on that (and also the Bravia app which is half-decent).

Re: 'play to device'
 

zhann works exactly as i wished for and controls the tv BUT tv says for every single file'cannot read file' noooo!!! so close...

Re: 'play to device'
 

I had no end of problems getting a decent transcoding DNLA server that didn't have random errors.

PS3Mediaserver was working great for a while, but I ran into issues with metadata refreshing. In the end, I moved to Serviio (http://www.serviio.org/) which does the whole job with the minimum of fuss (even copes admirably with my 360).

This should sort out your cannot read file issues, assuming the issue is codec-related.

Re: 'play to device'
 

this doesnt work on the n900 though surely?

Re: 'play to device'
 

Ahhhh.

My apologies ; I didn't realise you intended your N900 to be serving the content. No - the N900 would probably struggle. It could work ; pre-reqs are ffmpeg and Java SE (the latter is possible via jumping through hoops, pulling knobs, bells and whistles as documented elsewhere on talk.maemo.org) but it would probably be an unpleasant experience.

Zhaan allows you to specify both a DLNA server and DLNA client (both of which can be local or remote and all combinations in between).

*edit*

Although from your previous issues, it appears that the issue may be with Zhaan if you are indeed able to use your Eeepad to control the DLNA request.


I'm guessing what you need, in order to play your content, is to transcode the intended file into a container and codec(s) that your telly is capable of rendering.

Have you tried plugging the N900 in via USB and playing back content locally (although this may not prove anything as - for example - the Bravia playback abilities differ over USB than they do over DLNA

Re: 'play to device'
 

when i try to use zhann on the n900 it doesnt even show the n900 content,just a windows pc and my synology NAS and it wont show/display ANYTHING,not even a jpeg.
the viera displays most content when i use the eee pad and the same amount when i use the vieras poor inbuilt media player so know they are not an issue.
zhann appears to do exactly what the eee pad does and what i require,its just a shame that something along the line doesnt quite work :(
i guess its not a huge issue as i can easily access the nas to the screen via the eee,ps3,xbox or the tv direct,would have just been nice to be able to do the same with the 900..
also,the only one out of all the above devices that allows a track to continue playing while you peruse your next choice is th xbox 360,how can they get it so right and everyone else fails!

Re: 'play to device'
 

I think I remember playing a file to my media center pc (windows media player) from N900
then again I may remember wrong

btw the N95 did this perfectly (when WMP wasn't eating up all cpu or just not responding)